The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer.

Loading ...

Loading ...

This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe

4chan founder moot at ROFLCon II (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's difficult to the describe 4chan—the anonymous Web imageboard that is known equally for its ability to generate memes and a sense of disgust with the uninitiated—without using some variation on the the words "notorious" or "dark corner of Web". Which is perhaps why DrawQuest—the new iPad app developed by 4chan founder Chris Poole (better known as "moot" in the land of ones and zeroes) is so surprising: It's as PG as it is addictive.

The concept is simple: Every day, users are given a new challenge: "Create your own superhero" or "Help Thomas Edison come up with a new invention". They must then do their best to draw a solution, at which point they can browse through other folks' visual responses to the same question. It's all quite fun. As the app celebrates a new update that adds social features such as Web-based profiles where folks can show off their past drawings, I spoke with Poole about DrawQuest, 4chan, and where he sees both products going in the future.

Tell me about how the idea for Drawquest came about? What do you hopethe new features add to the platform?

DrawQuest was created to address a pain point we observed with our first product, Canvas, which was that users had difficulty creating media via our remixer editor. After a lot of testing, we found that their struggle had less to do with the tool we provided them, and more to do with their belief that they simply weren't creative or capable of remixing. We created DrawQuest as a simple, daily challenge-response game to help get the ball rolling for these people and solve the "blank sheet of paper" problem, which is what had prevented them from creating with Canvas.

Just about all of your endeavors, from 4chan to Drawquest, seem toreflect an interest in art, images, and drawings. How important arethese things to your life?

Hugely. I love media, and platforms where people can communicate using media.

What's the absolute craziest or most surprising piece of work you'veever seen submitted to Drawquest?

It's hard to name one individual piece of work since there are so many excellent ones, but we've always been a big fan of one of our users who somehow manages to connect sloths (the animal) to every template we make. He unsurprisingly goes by "Slothdude".

It seems like a number of the new community-focused features areaimed at sort of turning Drawquest into a social network based aroundart and drawing. Is this based on your own perceived shortcomings ofexisting social networks when it comes to these fields?

It was less a shortcoming of existing social networks, and more a shortcoming of existing drawing tools. We surveyed the landscape of drawing apps on iPad and found no shortage of incredible drawing tools, but struggled to find equally incredible drawing *communities*. We really wanted to create a tablet-first drawing community that could offer something that traditional web communities couldn't, by combining the creative process and community features in one.

4chan has developed a reputation for being at least a little bitNSFW. From what I can tell, Drawquest is anything but. Do you findsome folks taking biases related to 4chan and its reputation andcarrying them over to how they receive or perceive your otherprojects?

Surprisingly little, since the demographics are entirely different. DrawQuest skews heavily female and a bit younger, whereas 4chan is a very male, mid-20's demo. Since there's little overlap, I don't think we've been affected by much bias.

What's your involvement with 4chan like these days? What would youlike to see happen to the platform in the future?

It's still basically just me. I've always treated it as a hobby more than a business, and something that I work on in my spare time. It's as big as its ever been though, and has a never-ending todo list that I try to work on whenever I find some free time between my work on DrawQuest and personal life.